Word: buber
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Martin Buber, quoting Rabbi Mendel of Kosov...
...world's greatest Jewish philosopher and a pioneer Zionist, Martin Buber has lived in Jerusalem since 1938, when he fled the Nazis. Often opposed to Israel's policies (example: he advocates greater efforts to make peace with the Arabs), Buber is now in conflict with Premier David Ben-Gurion on a bitter issue: the fate of Adolf Eichmann...
Last month Buber phoned Ben-Gurion and asked permission to see him. No, the old (75) Premier told the ancient (84) philosopher, "you are older than I. I will come to see you.'' For two hours in Buber's house on Love of Zion Street, Ben-Gurion listened while Buber pleaded with him to commute the Eichmann death sentence. Society is merely a group of persons, argued Buber, and when it kills one man, it is killing part of itself. "Who gave society the right to kill itself?" he asked. "Society does not have such plenipotentiary rights...
...truly repugnant aspect of this article is that it reveals the author's mental chaos so candidly. It is all very well to follow Martin Buber in advocating free and untrammeled dialogue between human beings; nevertheless, no one ought to have the right to use a public forum for raving mistakenly (and without any solid basis) about other men's religion or to foist his own halfbaked and embarrassingly intimate worldview on strangers. The University provides, at great expense, an outlet for students who need this kind of audience...
...antinomian facet of Gordon's thought, which Leifer rejects as being alien to the Jewish tradition. Maybe that's why I like it (some of my best friends work for Mosaic, don't forget.) The antinomian (existentialist is the current word, I suppose) bias of thinkers like Gordon and Buber clearly do clash with law-centered traditional Judaism. But the absence of an absolute ground for morality in these two writers is not, as Leifer says, evidence that Judaism today lacks vigor. Rather, it is a token that Gordon and Buber are groping for a truer, more relativistic truth than...